The End
by SilentProtagonist000
Summary: I'm sorry, Green, for everything that I didn't do to save you. Red/Green. Originalshipping. Mangaverse. Red POV, first person.


This is the end.

I can't put my mistakes behind me. I've lost everything—my Pokemon, my soul, my mind, standing here on this mountain, braving blizzards and tears that refused to come to me. My hair has frozen to my scalp, threatening to peel off if the temperature dropped even one more negative degree. With each gradually thawing, melting snowflake that has touched my frostbitten skin, I've felt my sanity rising further and further above my grasp. One by one, my feelings left my body. I've been sleeping without a cover, hoping that one day, I'll awaken preserved for eternity by the cold.

Or I won't wake up. That might be better.

I miss you, Green. I'm sorry to have so many regrets—especially involving you. Why, that day when we were just little kids, had I defeated you on purpose? Why had I unleashed my inner strength that I had been caching away, storing for so long as our childish rivalry wore on like a threadbare blanket? Why didn't I let you win? If you had prevailed against my Charmander, perhaps you would have gotten bored with Pokemon. Perhaps you would have left and stayed home at Pallet Town while I fought storms and Gym leaders with every scintilla of my mental energy. Then I wouldn't have gotten you into this mess.

I should have told you to turn back when I encountered you at Cerulean City. I should have gotten on my knees and pleaded for you to step away from this disastrous fate when we stumbled upon each other in the Silph Company. But I didn't. Some foul, vile force within my cells struggled to keep me back. And I listened to it.

Why the hell did I listen?

The day you died, I couldn't bring myself to shed tears. It wasn't because I didn't contain one ounce of mourning or sadness—in fact, it so overwhelmed me that I was stricken with grief. My tear ducts were dry; I didn't find the strength within me to cry. The memories of you were too happy, too powerful to just let die due to a bout of tears. Because of this, people accused me of not caring. They said inasmuch as you were my rival, I had always wished you to disappear at one point or another.

I hated those lies people spouted on your behalf. You were everything but my nemesis. Yes, you were my adversary when it came to training and battling Pokemon, but otherwise, I haven't a soul in my mind that surpassed you as my best friend. We feuded as children, kicking sand in each other's faces on the tiny beach near Pallet Town, the one that rested by the extended sea that lead to Cinnabar Island. Sometimes, I remember you putting a tack under my chair at school in Viridian City, which I took revenge on you by picking you last to be on my team if we played dodgeball in gym.

We acted like we despised each other, when that was far from reality. If I defeated your Squirtle in battle back in the preliminary days of our Pokemon journeys, I'd offer you a Potion. You always turned it down—out of pride, I knew very well. On occasion, if we ran into each other in a city and chose not to fight, we'd reminisce about how we walked together on Route 1 every day to get to Viridian City and how we'd play cops and robbers or play wrestling on weekends.

Why can't we be kids again? Those days never mattered. We had a hundred of them to come.

And now, suddenly, they've all disappeared, and left me with nothing.

I am here on this mountain because I am numb. Numb to the cold, numb to Pikachu as he coos and gently prods me on the shoulder, and numb to the emotions I should have. I lost my ability to cry, sleep, eat healthily, and talk ever since I let you go. Challengers can't look me in the eye. It's almost like my silence scares them; intimidates them, makes them dislike their decision to have even come up here in the first place. I wish they'd stop coming. Every time I catch a glimpse of a human being, a Typhlosion or a Meganium, it makes me want to just topple off the side of this cursed mountain and join you.

Let you go, once and for all.

Or perhaps I will never let you go.

Perhaps you're still clinging to me.

No, not perhaps.

Yes, you are.


End file.
